Putney Pusher suspect found dead, according to reports

[Fartughtyred]

Goodness me, wasn't expecting that.

I’m shocked people on this thread have been calling the man who died “evil” and a waste of skin and hoping he had a drawn out death. He was not found guilty. People who are wrongfully arrested or accused have been known to kill themself because of the stress. In this day and age SM and internet coverage amplifies this many times.

And not that it means anything but frankly I don’t think this guy looks anything like the man in the video.
What a horrible world we live in

I've just listened to the R4 interview with his sisters

If what they say is true it certainly casts doubt on him being the pusher. He lived in Notting Hill so it's unlikely that Putney Bridge was on his jogging route - he would have had to jog about 4 miles through traffic-congested London streets, and back, when he had Hyde Park on his doorstep. Doesn't make sense

I'm assuming the police checked various footage to see if he was a regular jogger around Putney

Nothing to do with guilt/innocence - they also said that the police turned up with a media camera crew?

I'm really shocked by some of the responses here, regarding the death of someone that hadn't been found guilty. Maybe he was the 'Putney Pusher', in which case he should have faced some punishment for sure. Maybe he wasn't a nice person, I don't know. But comments of 'good' or 'coward' etc. based on perceived guilt, or that he took drugs, or that he was privileged are pretty disgusting.

100% agree

Now it's getting truly bizarre. In 2021, somebody called Sonya Kelly wrote and produced a play, "Once Upon A Bridge."

Completely fictional, mind you. Based on a real story but fictional. It's about a young Irish woman starting a legal career in London, she crosses a bridge. In Putney. Putney Bridge, you might say. She is pushed into the path of an oncoming bus, driven by a recent immigrant from Senegal. He swerves and misses her but the jogger absconds from the scene.

The jogger character is a wealthy, upper class, white man in his thirties who is a City banker.

So, in summary. In real life, we know practically nothing about the victim, the bus driver was white and French and in 2021, Nicholas Brandram wasn't yet a suspect.

Yes, yes, fiction and all that but how...I don't know what to say.

This play has done the Edinburgh Fringe recently, and was put on in Barnes in 2024. Just down the road from Chiswick, I believe. It's quite well known apparently.

The Met Police have praised the production, saying it might jog a few memories.

Police hope new play about the ‘Putney Pusher’ can help restart investigation | Crime | The Guardian https://share.google/hUVB13WPwa3mdN2Vb

Here's a review from 2021, when it was first staged:

Once Upon a Bridge review – three worlds collide in near-death drama | Theatre | The Guardian https://share.google/HM4FlwFMOa3yjTA4B

If Nicholas Brandram WAS innocent, and he knew about this play, what a Kafkaesque nightmare to live through. The other characters in the play are widely off beam but the jogger is him to a tee.

I'm assuming the police checked various footage to see if he was a regular jogger around Putney

I wouldn't assume street footage from that area in 2017 still exists.

But at the time of crime they must have viewed and stored footage from street and bus CCTV

Yes I'd expect they still have some, particularly from close to where the attack took place. But not for the entirety of the area to the extent that they could conclusively establish his typical running patterns (or lack of them) at the time.

The driver wasn’t white though. I watched a video of him being interviewed by Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid.

Wasn't he? Another mess up by google then. Sorry.

If he'd kept himself very fit it's not impossible at all.

The fact that he worked in one place and Putney Bridge is not nearby is more uncertain.

From the publically available info, it's certainly very far from "beyond reasonable doubt".

The driver was very definitely Black - another reminder why we have to be careful about what we read online

The statement from the family/ sisters is really quite odd.

Their apparent belief that if the suspect/ arrested person is distressed, that the investigation should stop because they were at risk - nope, that's not how policing works.

The complete failure to mention either the drugs found in the home of a young child, or the previous conviction for hitting a woman on a bike and then fucking off without checking the victim was OK, and the absolute implausibilty that you could hit someone with a harley and just... not notice.

Negative DNA evidence would not absolve him - it'd just be an absence of DNA which could occur for lots of reasons. Actual absence/ no contact, poor forensics at the scene, all sorts.

In the stills from the bridge, the man does appear to have a tattoo or some other skin discolouration on his right arm.

Him not living near the incident site is not proof of anything either. People run all over the place. He could have stayed somewhere else the previous night.

Evidence of an email being sent is not very conclusive, not unless they can say categorically who sent it, and where from - and presumably the digital footprint is going to be somewhat blurry/ entirely absent after 9 years.

Let's let the police and the IOPC do their jobs.

It may well not be him, we may never know. However, there’s a more recent photo of him on a bike in cycling gear, it shows the tattoo is on the inner aspect of his right forearm so you couldn’t see it from the cctv video anyway. In this photo his calves are partly visible and they look normal to me. I would personally say his likeness to the jogger in the cctv is very close, similar nose in profile, mouth quite high with longer chin, prominent dark brows. Doesn’t mean it’s him of course, but I don’t think the Met were unreasonable to suspect him.

No ones saying that they were wrong yo suspect him, question him or possibly even arrest him. What's in doubt is did they make a timely effort to establish whether he should be charged or eliminated from their enquiries and why they (if it's true) were so forthcoming with their suspicions to the police.

...to the press

Well the sisters are saying that it was wrong to suspect him and he didn’t look like the perpetrator, so yes, people are saying that.

Do we actually know yet if it was the police who told the press about the arrest?

According to his sisters on the BBC interview the police turned up with a media film crew

Things can get so tangled - even on Today, Justin Webb referred to the victim as 'a jogger' when from what I can see she is dressed for a day at the office, not in jogging gear

Has anyone seen the sisters mention the female cyclist he knocked off her bike and then fled the scene from?

Or are they completely ignoring that he has previously been found to cause harm to women and leave the scene.

Has anyone seen the sisters mention the female cyclist he knocked off her bike and then fled the scene from?

Or are they completely ignoring that he has previously been found to cause harm to women and leave the scene.

He was also arrested for possession of drugs so his career would have been over anyway whether or not he had pushed the woman on the bridge.

Hate recreational drug users due torneh exploitation.

Lol if recreational use of drugs was a career ending offence, 3/4 of London would be out of a job.

His sisters were in the press today, complaining about "everything he's been through, poor baby".
I'm sorry, but of course he did it, and he was too cowardly to face the consequences. He thought for years that he'd gotten away with it. And like all cowardly men, he couldn't deal with the fact that the wheels of justice were turning in his direction. A prime example of karma playing the long game.
Sympathies for his child and family, of course, but none for him. My thoughts are with the woman he almost killed, and the bus driver, whose swift action saved her life.

Yep, but most of them never come to police notice.